Our Sunshine
by justanoutlaw
Summary: Our Girl verse. The life of the Nolan family after they were happily reunited in Our Girl. It's not always easy, but at least they have each other.


**The first flashforward for this verse. Of course, prompts are always accepted. :)**

**Prompted by loboselinaistrash: Prompts for the Charmings - "Are you mad at me?"**

Mary Margaret had learned quite a few things from her time as a mother. She knew their favorite foods and their bedtime routines. She knew which kids needed a push, while which ones were independent enough to do things on their own.

Yes, Mary Margaret's time as a mother had taught her a lot. Including when a storm was brewing.

Emma's teen years had been a roller coaster of ups and downs, which was to be expected. There were days they saw their happy, funny and good-naturedly sarcastic daughter. There were others when she'd grumble words and glare at her brothers for merely existing. Mary Margaret and David were fine with the mood swings, they left the door of communication open and mainly had the rule of being respectful, even if she was having a bad day.

Despite her attitude and talk back, Emma was a good kid. She followed the rules and was home by curfew. She did well in school and if she was struggling, she had gotten better about asking for help. She knew that her parents trusted her.

Until the car accident that took place a little before her 17th birthday.

Emma had talked about getting her license from the time she was 13 years old. She loved her two younger brothers, more than life itself, but with them, it meant that her parents didn't always have the time to drive her everywhere that she wanted to go. She was lucky that Storybrooke was a small town and most places were accessible by walking, but sometimes she and her friends wanted to go to the beach or out of town, yet couldn't because all of their parents were busy.

She had been given the safe driving talk a million times. David was a former cop, he knew how dangerous driving could be and had seen one too many teen drivers get into accidents their first year. Emma promised them she wouldn't text and drive, she wouldn't touch her phone at all. In fact, she promised to keep it in the glove compartment while she drove, so it wouldn't even be a temptation.

With all that in mind, they had been okay with Emma getting her driver's license six months after she turned 16. Mary Margaret and David split the costs with her on a car, so long as she paid for insurance and gas and she got her yellow Volkswagen bug. It quickly became her baby. She was a responsible driver, never getting into accidents. David had been apprehensive, but had to admit that he was wrong.

Or so, he thought.

He was wrapping up at work when he got a call from Mary Margaret. The first words out of her mouth made him know it couldn't be good.

"I need you to promise me you're not going to freak out."

David instantly set down the file in his hand. "What happened?"

"Emma was in a car accident."

"What?! Is she okay? Who was she with? Is she in the hospital?"

"She's fine, just a little spooked. She had to swerve to miss a car and hit a tree. I took her to the emergency room, but there's nothing physically wrong with her."

David let out a deep breath. Thank God. "And the car?"

"It's got a few dents and scratches in it."

"I'll take it to Tiny to fix."

"I actually don't think that we're going to be fixing this."

"What? We agreed any repairs would be on us, so long as Emma didn't cause the accident."

"Well, Emma did cause it."

"Huh? You said…"

"She swerved to miss the car because she had been texting and driving."

David's grip on the phone tightened a bit. "What? Are you sure?"

"Apparently she was being tailed by a cop when it happened, he saw her and was going to pull her over anyway. He gave her a ticket."

"I'm on my way home right now."

"David, you have every right to be angry right now, but you need to take some deep breaths. You can't lose it on her right now."

David knew his wife was right, but he couldn't shake the anger that was in his body as he hung up and headed out of the office. They had gone over this with her time and time again. How could she be so stupid?

He did his best to calm down as he drove, knowing that they didn't need two accidents in one day. Luckily, the house wasn't too far away. He pulled up behind Emma's bug and saw the dents, which made him feel angry all over again. What if that had happened to her? What if she had died?

He stormed up the steps and opened the door, slamming it shut behind him.

"Emma!"

"We're in her room," Mary Margaret's voice carried from upstairs.

David went up there and found the two girls sitting on the bed. Emma had her arms folded over her chest, already looking pretty defensive. David took her in, confirming Mary Margaret's statement that physically she was okay.

"Where's your phone?" He asked.

"Mom has it," Emma mumbled.

"Good. What the hell were you thinking? Who was so important that you couldn't wait until you got wherever you were going?"

Emma sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. "Lily."

"And Lily couldn't wait?"

"We were talking about what we're doing tonight."

"Oh, I can tell you what you're doing, you're staying home."

"Dad!"

Mary Margaret got up and took her spot beside her husband.

"Your father's right, Emma. We're going to be taking your keys as well," she said. "You're grounded from driving for a bit."

"You're grounded, period. Two months."

Emma's eyes widened. "Dad!"

"Give me your license."

"What?"

"Just give it to me."

Emma grabbed her backpack and pulled out her wallet, fishing around it and finally found her license, tossing it to him. David found pair of scissors on her desk and clipped it in half. Emma gasped, jumping up off her bed.

"You can't do that!"

"I can. You've lost the privilege of driving. Even after your grounding is over, you're going to wait 6 months to get a new one."

Emma's eyes went to her mom. "Mom, talk some sense into him!"

Mary Margaret shook her head. "I agree with your father, Emma. And honestly, the more you keep raising your voice, the more time you're going to get." She fixed her with a look and Emma flopped back on her bed.

"You two suck!"

"Alright, now it's seven months until you get another license," David said, his voice growing darker. "You wanna go for a full year, because I'm good with that."

"I'm fine! You're making a federal case!"

"And you almost weren't, Emma Ruth," David took a step forward. Emma hadn't had a middle name and when they adopted her, they gave her his mother's as one, which she had loved at the time but hated it when she was in trouble. "Texting and driving is dangerous! You could've died!"

"At least I wouldn't be here with you yelling at me," Emma mumbled under breath.

David's eyes widened and Mary Margaret grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

"Alright," she said, her voice scarily calm. "Your father and I are going downstairs. You can stay up here until dinner's ready and think about how you're talking to us, because we sure as hell didn't raise you to act like this."

"I'm going to have your car moved to Robin's lot," David added, thinking about his mechanic friend who often did that for the parents of teenagers when they got their cars revoked.

Emma mumbled again, "Whatever."

Mary Margaret lead her husband out of the room, but before they were completely out, David could hear her calling back for him. He turned around and could see some of her resolve softening.

"Are you mad at me?"

David paused for a minute. At first anger was what he thought he was feeling, but now it felt so much different. "I'm not mad, Emma. I'm disappointed."

With that, he walked out the door and shut the door behind him.

***x***

Emma didn't talk to David for a few days and he honestly didn't have much to say to her. He couldn't believe how cavalier she was being about the entire thing. They had gone over this with her time and time again. How could she be so stupid? He knew maybe he should talk to her, but deep down he just couldn't handle another talk without yelling and he didn't want to be that type of parent. Mary Margaret agreed that everyone needed to cool off a bit.

So, when he got a call from his father asking if he could come by and help fix his truck, he took the reprieve of their tense household and headed over there. Ruth and Robert had finally decided to give up their farm a year prior, they were just getting too old to tend to it alone and any help they had to hire, would just make it not as profitable. So, they took their savings and Robert's pension from when he worked at the old tire factory and started living retired life. Mary Margaret and David had tried to persuade them to move in with them, but they were stubborn and insisted on having their own place. They bought a house in Storybrooke, though, so they could be closer to the grandchildren.

Robert took Ruth's car to head to market after David insisted he could handle it on his own. The last thing he needed 60 year old father getting hurt while working under it. Ruth came outside, holding a glass of lemonade.

"Got you something to drink."

"Thanks, Mom," David said, accepting it from her and taking a sip. "How've you been?"

"Good, good. Your father and I are thinking of going to Boston next week for a little vacation."

"Sounds like fun."

"And how are the grandchildren? I was hoping you'd have brought them by with you, Mary Margaret too."

"Oh, well Neal had a game and Josh is at a birthday party. When you guys get back from Boston, though."

"And how's Emma?"

David sighed, feeling the cool glass ice up his palm. "Grounded."

Ruth raised an eyebrow. "What'd she do?"

"Texted while driving, she got into a little accident. She's fine," he quickly added when he saw the panic fill his mother's face. "Didn't get hurt or anything, thank God."

"Good."

"She's acting like nothing happened though," David ranted, feeling safe with his mother. "It's like we're the bad guys for grounding her and taking away her license. She won't look at me or even talk to me."

Ruth snorted and David gave her a look. She stopped, but kept a smile on her face.

"What?" He asked.

"Nothing, it's just…" She chuckled again. "I seem to remember Emma's father being the same way when he was your age."

"I never texted and drove, we didn't have texting when I was a kid."

"Maybe not, but I do seem to remember you deciding to play Speed Racer after junior homecoming." She clicked her tongue. "Crashed your father's car, he had been working on that thing for forever and trusted you to take that boy, what was his name? Kristoff Shepherd? Anyway, it was a big ask, but you begged him, you wanted to please your boyfriend. Your father said yes and ultimately, you disappointed him."

David's cheeks tinted pink at the memory. His father had built that old Thunderbird from scratch and was so damn proud of it. With their lack of funds, it took years for him to complete and David had nearly destroyed it in one night. It took another three years before he could fix it completely again. He had gotten the lecture of a lifetime and a reminder about how lucky he was that he was too old to go over his father's knee. He had been so embarrassed at how his father talked to him, in front of Kristoff no less.

"I apologized," David mumbled.

"Not right away." Ruth tapped her chin. "If I remember correctly, you were upset with him for yelling at you in front of Kristoff, that you decided it was smart to mouth off. You said that he was a tyrant and that all he cared about was his precious car being hurt, not about you. That only earned you a few more lectures from him and me about respect. I seem to remember you folding your arms, rolling your eyes and blowing your obnoxiously long hair out your face, saying Whatever."

She did a dead ringer impression of her teenage son, which made his cheeks turn even darker. Ruth laughed again, shaking her head.

"Anyway, we gave you some time to cool down. One day, your father took you out for a drive in this beat up truck right here." She patted the hood of the green monstrosity that his father would never let go of. "I don't know what he said to you, but you came back in a better mood and were my loving, caring David."

David set the lemonade down on the hood and shoved his hands in his pockets. "He asked me why I thought he cared more about that car than him. I brought up how hard he always was on me and James. He was so different than you. I mean, you both were strict, but he was worse. Always getting on us. He told me it was because he wanted us to be better than him, to be good men and that his own father never even talked to him. He loved us and maybe he yelled a little too much and didn't say it enough, but he did. He said I was more important than that stupid car and when he got the call about the accident, he was so scared that the cops were going to say that I was dead. That he was going to lose one third of his entire world."

Neither of them mentioned the irony that just one year later, he would actually lose a third of it when James died.

"Did that help? Hearing him say that?" Ruth asked instead.

David slowly nodded. "Yeah. It…it made me respect him more. I understood his parenting. I still don't agree with all of what he did, but I get it."

"Exactly."

"Emma and I are closer than Dad and I were, though."

"True. That may make it worse for her right now."

Robert pulled back in the driveway and Ruth smiled at him, giving him a small wave, before turning back to her son.

"You've always been so stubborn, David. Your father had to come to you after that accident, maybe you need to go to Emma for this one," she said, before going to help her husband with the groceries."

***x***

David let his mother's words soak in over the next day and realized that she was right. Since Mary Margaret started working at the high school, she had been giving Emma a ride home, but he texted his wife to let Emma know he'd be doing that for her that afternoon. Neal had agreed to walk Josh home and babysit him until his parents got home, no questions asked. A part of him kept waiting for that teen rebellion to kick in. He was then reminded that Josh wouldn't be far behind and that made him wonder when the hell his kids had grown up so fast?

He parked in front of the school and waited, wondering if Emma would actually come out. He decided to give it 15 minutes before he went looking. Embarrassing her wouldn't help matters. As it turned out, it was only 5 minutes before the school doors opened and she walked out with Lily Page and Alice Jones. She looked up and tilted her head, before turning to both of them, saying something. They each gave her a hug, before walking off to Lily's own car. Emma headed to her father's car and got inside.

"Why are you picking me up?" She asked, uttering her first words to him in days, once he pulled out of the lot.

"Figured it'd be nice if you didn't have to wait on your mom."

"What about Josh?"

"Neal's walking him home and agreed to babysit him for a bit."

"Where are we going? I'm grounded."

David didn't reply to that. He drove through the town and parked at the beach. It was a September day, so the air would be a bit crisp and it would be empty. They got out of the car and started walking in the sand. David could spot the playground that he used to take Emma to play on when she was little. She loved going there, especially if it meant she could go swimming afterwards. They seemed like just yesterday and not 5 years ago.

"So…you did something incredibly stupid," he said, after a bit of silence.

"If you brought me here to yell at me again…"

"I didn't come here to yell." David turned to her. "Em, talk to me. Why did you text Lily?"

Emma bit down on her lip and for a moment, seemed so much younger than 16. "I…I don't know."

"Come on, you know I can't accept that."

"I guess, we were just having this conversation and I was ignoring her texts at first, but the phone just kept buzzing." She shrugged. "So, I picked it up and typed a reply. It was stupid, I know. I could've completely totaled the bug."

"I don't give a damn about the bug, Emma. You could've hurt someone else or yourself." He paused. "You know, your mother and I always dreamed of a family. When you came into our lives, you lit up. Our dream came true." He softly smiled at the memory of Emma coming to live with them. "And the other day, I could've lost my dream."

Guilt was written across Emma's eyes. "Dad…"

"No, let me finish. Emma, when I was your age, I did something stupid." He saw Emma raise an eyebrow and chuckled. "Yeah, your old man was an asshole when he was a teenager. At least to my parents. I took my dad's car for homecoming and wanted to impress my date, so I sped."

"Were you hurt?"

"Outside a few cuts, no. The car was totaled though. My father reamed me out in front of my boyfriend at the time and I was so embarrassed. I thought all he cared about was the car, but he made it clear later it had nothing to do with that. He was scared, scared of losing me. He told me that he dreamed of me, dreamed of James when we were younger. He had dreams of our futures and we were under no circumstance allowed to take those dreams away from him." He put a hand on Emma's shoulder. "I love you, Emma. More than life itself. You, your brothers, you are my dream come true. My father lost one half his dream the day James died. I will not let you take away my dream either."

Tears sprung to Emma's eyes and she looked up at her father, seeing the complete love and devotion in his eyes.

"I know I yelled at you, Emma, and I don't do that often, but I was scared."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I…I'm sorry, Daddy."

She leaned into him, the tears falling down her face. David wrapped his arms around her, cradling the back of her head as he always did when they hugged. He kissed the top of her head.

"I…I wasn't thinking and I just…I'm sorry."

"I know, kiddo. I know."

"I'm sorry I gave you an attitude about it. I just was so embarrassed and mad…"

"I get it." He kissed her temple. "You're safe, though. That's what matters now. And you're never going to do it again, right?"

"Right."

She buried her head into his shoulder and he could feel his sweatshirt getting wet, but he didn't care. He held his daughter in his arms, letting a few tears fall himself. She was safe, she was okay. He wasn't going to lose his baby girl.


End file.
